OniChan
by NotedStrangePerson
Summary: Diva's daughters ask Hagi about their mother and Saya. Based on a chapter from Captain Corelli's Mandolin.


Disclaimer: I do not own any of the Blood: The Last Vampire or Blood+ characters/storylines or any affiliated merchandise. All of the previous are owned by Production I.G and Sony. Even if they're out of character . . .

Further Disclaimer: Because I am devoid of any originality or imagination, I "lifted" the format straight out of Captain Corelli's Mandolin – namely chapter 19 L'Omosessuale (6) – written by Louis de Bernières. Read it. 'Tis goooooooood.

P.S. I apologise in advanced for the level of sappiness. Let's face it, the last few episodes of Blood+ were emo anyway.

**UPDATE:** 25/09/07 - It's official, we know the names of Diva's two girls! As of yet I don't know which is blue-eyed and which is red-eyed. If anyone knows, I'll be happy to correct any mistakes. (Source Wikipedia & Blood+ Guidebook)

Oni-Chan

David had a feeling too many people would ask questions as to why he gave his son an Eastern name, so he adapted it to the more Westernised "Ricky". It wasn't a name he would have chosen himself, but that's neither here nor there.

Kanade allowed her quiet, calm air and blue eyes to deceive people into thinking her more boisterous sister was the dominant one – the unflustered way she dealt with Hibiki revealed the close bond between the twins, that neither ruled over the other, and where one girl lacked the other more than made up for. Hagi seemed an odd person to ask, having suddenly dropped into their lives by being noticed busking on the same sidewalk he had seen Saya all those years ago. They could see in his pale flesh and slanting eyes more than the bandages he still wore on his arm, that a vampire lurked simmering just beneath his skin. As he spoke he never took his hands away from the neck of the cello or the end of the bow.

Kai half-ignored them in the background, one eyes constantly darting towards the three demi-demons while pretending to stare at the page he had not turned for half an hour.

"Did mum live with Saya, ojisan? Were she and Saya ever friends?"

"They lived in a big mansion, in the middle of the countryside, surrounded by herds of little goats that ate the flowers that growing between the trees."

(She lived at the top of a dank tower where in winter frost cracked between the slabs and made them like ice, and in summer became so hot the stones burned her skin. She lived in a place where her cries went unheard, and when Saya was fed when her body demanded it, Diva was woken when she finally went to sleep, and eventually even in her infant mind realised her thin keening would go unanswered. She lived in a place where her only company was a perverted man who grew jealous of me because he wanted the duty of discovering if she was good breeding stock himself.

The only person who found her alone in the room that was her world was her sister, whom she had greeted with no more hostility than she did the spiders and tiny starlings that occasionally came to meet her, even though she had a birds eye view of what to her must have seemed like the paradise she was never allowed to touch.

Though I did not know it at the time, in other parts of the world there were case studies of feral children who had been abandoned by their parents and raised by animals – Peter the Wild Boy, Genie, Ivan Mishukov – only to be returned to civilisation in adolescence. They never learned to wear clothes properly, never learnt more than a few words, were no more than animals in human skin. Before Diva was released, she could not talk. Had Diva been a human, she would never have recovered.)

"How did she meet our dad, ojisan?"

"He was Kai's little brother. A Chiropteran Queen can only conceive with the Chevalier of her sister."

(He had tried to run away but she could hear the beating of his heart – and the more he wanted to be safe, the more terrified he became, the easier it was for her to catch him.

I was fond of that little boy, we did not spit and fight over why we should have to share Saya but came together with the same affection we felt for our Queen, regardless of the others around us. I am glad I did not have to see him die that day.

It is easy to love the ones who are good, the ones who are on your side and who love you in return. I did not hate Diva, no more than I hate you two. I had to follow only what Saya asked of me, when she gave herself over to rage and let it drive her to kill her only sibling. I have long understood the anger of losing someone – that Diva was not truly evil but a sick twisted mind and a pawn for that man to play with. All that fell before my eyes when I saw his body and pulled away the curtain of deception from my eyes. Every afterthought on her life, any excuse that meant she could be forgiven, felt like a blade turning in betrayal of Riku's memory.

"Since I got something precious from this child, I gave him some of my blood in return. But now I know – how my sister feels when she kills one of my Chevaliers. Feels so good . . .")

"She died quickly didn't she, ojisan? She wasn't in pain?"

"The crystallisation shuts off the nerves in the extremities. She would not have felt a thing."

(For one mortifying moment I thought I had lost her. She was like a blind man, whose sight, frail though it was, had faded after the death of her father – had become blinded by anger. When she was with George for a brief time her eyesight was returned to her, with all the colours and shapes and tones that accompany it. Only to have it snatched away again. I could see she was fed up of fighting, poised on the brink where her one duty was to slay Diva, only to follow her immediately afterwards into the abyss.

Perhaps Diva was fed up too. She no longer mourned the passing of her Chevaliers; she seemed to know when her own father died and forgot about him in that same moment. They were doppelgangers – spirits identical to one another, and where one grows stronger, the other fades. It was probably the only time they were almost equal, and too late did they both realise that Diva was going to the one place Saya could not follow. In those last few moments, where every sound burns itself into your memory, the ever talkative, ever excitable Diva, was lost for words.

I don't think anyone ever saw Diva cry. She had three expressions – a manic grin, tantrums of anger, and the blank "spaced-out" look that accompanies people lost within themselves. The last expression on Diva's face was one of sorrow, frozen forever in stone as she said goodbye to you two. I covered her body with a blanket.)

"As long as she had a good life before she died."

"She had seven Chevaliers to dote on her – they gave her expensive clothes and everything she could ever want, and protected her day and night; her voice sang to thousands who cheered on every note."

(She lived to satisfy the curiosity of the people who dedicate their lives to improving mankind and don't have a shred of humanity in them; she lived as a lab rat with nothing to cover herself except the cloth she had been laid on as a baby, to have her body torn apart and sewn up again – like Karl, and James, and Lulu, even Solomon; she lived to take revenge on the innocent, knowing all too well that with a slight twist of fate, we could have been the ones running from a red-eyed lunatic.

The people she knew either threw themselves at her feet or wanted to kill her. They treated her like a China Doll – beautiful, delicate, priceless, inanimate. Her mind was closed to the feelings and concerns of others, as apathetic and selfish as a child. She had all she could ever want and still demanded more. She was the other version of Saya, the Saya I met at the Zoo – though she had all her heart desired, she didn't see the point of anything, until she learned to love something in return.

She could not have raised you two. She gave birth in her second year, and you will not enter your hibernation cycles until Ricky is fifty. She would not have lived to see you grow up into the versions of her and Saya she longed to be. Both of you, your aunt, and your mother, would have been out of sync, so that the world at any given point would have been inhabited by vampires, but never to see each other again.

I hope life treats you better than it treated Diva. I hope you live like Saya – not the Saya I turned to at the Zoo, surrounded by riches, given all that you want, and called a demon by everybody she knew – but Saya Otonashi, the girl who lived with her brothers in the restaurant, and was loved by anyone she came into contact with. It wasn't a case of Nature vs. Nurture, we know that now. Treat them like monsters, and that is what they will become. I think if Diva had known about the isolation chamber they kept Saya in, during my lost years in the 60s, things would have turned out differently, not certainly for the better. But she's dead now. So what does it matter?

At this point I noticed the two girls smiling. When Kanade laughs she titters and puts her hands up to her mouth, Hibiki throws her head and lets her shoulders tremble with friendly chuckles. Things that have become characteristic of them.

And when I asked why they were smiling, they told me they had both read Joel's Diary.)

_The title is suppose to mean "Little Demon" and be a play on Onii-chan (which I thing means dear or little brother). A little dedication to Riku._

_Please R & R!_


End file.
